It has been close to 4 months since I arrived in the US of A. Ponniyin Selvan has been my companion for 3 and half months. As they say, all good things must come to an end and so did Ponniyin Selvan. My PhD will take me a few more years and I can conclude that it is not as good a thing as this epic novel. But that’s for another day.

Where to begin? Where to end? Plot, Romance and Nature. That Kalki is a genius in conveying all of this would be an understatement. The intrigue, suspense and drama would rival any modern crime thriller. The Romance is also epic. But what takes it into the heart and makes the reading so memorable that you want more is the poetic description of nature. Kalki’s genius is out in the open, where he says Cauvery is the woman of Tamil Nadu who goes to meet her husband, the big sea, and is sent by the other women of Tamil Nadu with Sarees as porandha veettu seedhanam on Aadi Perukku and as she nears her husband, her eagerness to reach him makes her spread her arms which grow multifold to hug her beloved (distributaries of the river as it reaches the estuary). Ponni, as Cauvery is called, with the Sun’s rays on her, gives the impression of a blue Saree with golden streaks over it with the green trees on either banks forming the borders. A man with a top angle view of nature alone can bring forth such creativity into his words.

Kalki’s biggest victory is however, in entrenching the lead characters in your heart. Again, he uses Nature throughout the novel to help himself. He uses storms as metaphors to convey to the reader, the storm in the plot and in the lead characters’ hearts. Be it the storm leading to the climax which forms the foil to the storm brewing in the plot or the storm in the sea, he is phenomenal. One such vignette from the novel, where one of the two Heroes, Vallavarayan Vandiyathevan, is caught in a storm in the middle of the sea:

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11 responses to “Kalki In His Element”

Superb post. From the start itself, I wanted to be like vandiyathevan and have awesome adventures🙂 In fact, at the point where he meets Arulmozhi and decides not to lie anymore, I felt disappointed because that was a core part of his character.

Kalki is a genius in using uvamais. One of my favorites from the scene where Vandhiyadevan meets Kundavai after his long adventure down south in Sri Lanka – The bee is forever attracted to the honey. After the long search the bee finds the honey, but finding it, drowns in it. Similar to that is how our hero feels after Kundavai, who he wanted to meet for so long, but now is lost for words upon meeting her!

Glad you liked it. Read on. The intrigue and suspense will build along with the depth in each character. The last couple of lines leave your hairs on their end and wanting for more. Unforgettable piece of epic.

Btw, an interesting trivia which I picked up on twitter: Notice how all the five parts start and end on a water body. The legend is that Kalki almost drowned in a river as a child, and hence his fixation with water bodies.

Most interesting. One thing that intrigued me was that the ending either showed a storm of happiness or a storm of disturbance in the hearts of the lead characters. 4th book and 5th book end in the same spot. Read on🙂

Am now with the last part of PS, and I, like everybody else, would say, Vandhiyaththevan is my fav. character! the sleep-talking, inquisitiveness, trying-to-explore-the-things-around-despite-having-an-important-task, the-urge-to-counter-Aazhwaarkkadiyaa, and all these with a quirk!
Kalki is awesome!🙂

Another beautiful analogy is when Vaanathi asks Kundavai if it isn’t too much for a dewdrop to wish to capture the sun. Kundavai replies with a question, asking her why the dewdrop glitters. Isn’t it because it locks the sun’s light within itself ? But alas, Vaanathi replies, the dewdrop gets what she deserves for over-reaching herself as she burns up and evaporates into nothingness as the sun’s rays scorch her. Kundavai thinks otherwise. She compares the sun to a possessive husband who doesn’t like his wife to be visible to any other man during the day and thus binds her to himself, but releases her again in the night when all human eyes are closed.